Anchorage Daily News

Two mushers, two basketball players and a three-time Super Bowl winner will be inducted into the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame tonight.

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Rick Swenson

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Mark Schlereth

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The ceremony, which is free and open to the public, begins at 6 p.m. at the Conoco Phillips atrium at 700 G Street.

Only two of the five individuals joining the two-year-old Hall of Fame will be in attendance -- five-time Iditarod winner Rick Swenson and three-time Super Bowl winner Mark Schlereth.

The two basketball players -- Carlos Boozer and Trajan Langdon -- have job commitments that will keep them away. Boozer is in the middle of the NBA season with the Utah Jazz, and Langdon is in the middle of the Euroleague season with CSKA Moscow, a pro team in Russia.

The final inductee, Joe Redington Sr., died in 1999 at age 82. A big crowd of Redingtons is expected to accept the honor on behalf of the man beloved throughout Alaska as the Father of the Iditarod, according to Hall of Fame director Harlow Robinson.

The ceremony will included video highlights of each athlete's career, as well as recorded statements from Boozer and Langdon. Boozer has a game tonight in Salt Lake City, and the Jazz have said they will show his parents' acceptance speech on the arena Jumbotron during a timeout, Robinson said.

Besides the individual selections, one event and one moment will be enshrined.

The event is the Great Alaska Shootout, which last year celebrated its 30th anniversary as one of college basketball's premier early season tournaments.

The moment is Tommy Moe's gold- medal downhill run at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer.

Moe was part of last year's inaugural class of individual inductees, joining sprint-mushing legend George Attla, four-time Iditarod winner Susan Butcher, two-time Stanley Cup hockey champion Scott Gomez and Olympic rowing champion Kris Thorsness.

The inaugural moment honored last year was the first summit of Mount McKinley. The inaugural event was the Iditarod.

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